The Way I Found Her by Rose Tremain

I’d never asked.
    I knew I had to get someone and so I charged up my stairs and opened the bathroom window and began calling to Didier. The job on the roof was so enormous that Didier often worked some part of Saturdays and when I shouted out, ‘Didier, aidezmoi!’ I prayed he’d still be there. He was there. He came climbing round to me straight away and swung himself in through the window. Didier’s body was powdered with slate dust. The bird on his neck looked as though it had gone flying into a grey mist. I hoped all this dust wouldn’t stain Valentina’s silk dress or fall on to the furniture.
    When we got back to the salon, Valentina was crying. Blue eyeshadow was running down her face. I think she thought I’d abandoned her and that she’d just lie there on the floor till nightfall.
    I knelt by her again. ‘Don’t cry, Valentina,’ I said. ‘Didier’s here.’ And she gazed up at me with her huge blue eyes.
    Didier knelt down, too. Already, I noticed, there was a bit of slate dust on the parquet. It was probably because of the bad old days with the coal that Valentina liked to have everything so totally clean. But right now, she was in too much pain to be aware that her rescuer was covered with grime. And he was very good with her, staying calm and asking her gently what had happened. When her sobs stopped, she said that she thought her arm was broken.
    Didier instructed me to fetch cushions. There was no shortage of these in Valentina’s apartment. There were embroidered cushions and tapestry cushions, cushions made of satin and cushions with tassels dangling from them, like sporrans. I chose a selection and Didier told me to lay them carefully alongside Valentina’s body. He seemed very intent and focused now, like a nurse, and I suddenly thought, I wonder if he once did this before, when his father was hurt?
    When we had the cushions all lined up, we slowly, carefully, rolled Valentina on to the cushion bed, so that her weight was off the broken arm. Seeing this, Sergei thought it must be time to go to sleep and so he lay down beside her. Valentina was still trembling with pain and shock and so I fetched a duvet from her room and covered her with this, while Didier went to telephone for an ambulance. I wanted to be the duvet, enfolding her.
    She asked me to light her one of her Russian cigarettes. So with one hand I helped her to smoke the cigarette, holding it next to her lips and putting it in and out of her beautiful mouth, and with the other I tried to wipe the watercolour sea from her face with one of the Marks and Spencer’s hankies Bertie had given me for Christmas.
    I wanted to go with her in the ambulance. I thought Didier and I were the heroes of the hour and that we had to see our mission through, but in the end neither of us went, because Alice came home and took over. I told Alice I wanted to come, but she ignored me. She thanked Didier for coping with the emergency, but she didn’t thank me.
    When the ambulance had driven away with Valentina and Alice inside, Didier and I sat down on the stairs in the hallway. Moinel came in with his shopping and gave us a nervous smile. When Moinel was out of earshot, I said: ‘Did your father fall off a roof, Didier?’
    He took off his glasses and polished them on his T-shirt – a thing he often did. Then he said: ‘Have you read Zola’s L’Assommoir ? Do you remember how Lantier falls?’
    I said I’d never read anything by Zola.
    Then Didier went on: ‘Well. Lantier is a roofer. His wife comes by with his children and he’s so glad to see them, he waves at them, without thinking. He lets go his grip . . .’
    â€˜And that’s what happened to your father? He let go?’
    â€˜Louis,’ he said, ‘when you are on a roof, you have to pay attention all the time. Especially on certain difficult jobs – a dome, for instance. No